


A Mother's Love

by gayships



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, American History, Feminist Themes, Irish Steve Rogers, M/M, Moms r the best, Queer History, Queer Themes, Romani Bucky Barnes, Socialism, socialist steve rogers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-19
Updated: 2018-07-19
Packaged: 2019-06-12 21:25:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15349077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gayships/pseuds/gayships
Summary: It takes a village.Or, two terrified mothers._________________I love stories that go in-depth about history, and I've been meaning to learn about queer history for a long time now. I thought it would be fun to write something along with it. So, this story includes a lot of headcanons, and a lot of canon divergence. This is about the history that America forgot. It's about the women who fought for the social aspect of this country. It's about expectations, and breaking them. It's about women who chose to fight, and women who chose not to, and how they were both brave. This story includes real people, who lived and died, and it wasn't always a happy ending. But they fought for you, and they fought for me. Read on!





	A Mother's Love

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [The stone's in the midst of it all](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1800199) by [togina](https://archiveofourown.org/users/togina/pseuds/togina). 



Winifred Barnes brought her son in to the world screaming. 

 

She would never admit it to anyone in the entirety of her long life, but for a moment, when she was clutching her nurses hand so hard she was certain she had broken it, she had thought to give up. And she had felt it so near. Off on the fringes of the pain, of the horror, of the gore surrounding her lower body- there was a soft darkness.

 

And, Ms. Barnes will admit, for a moment, just for a single second, she thought about slipping into that darkness. 

 

But then she had thought, _just once more,_ and with one more tensing of muscles, one more arching of agony, and a chorus filled the room. Another voice joined her in her pain, and it felt like coming home. She felt dazed, barely aware of the child being completely maneuvered from her body, so very focused on that screaming. 

 

“A boy!” cries the nursemaid, and Winifred lets her glazed eyes focus, just for a moment, to see her child. She hears her mother yelling in the voice of her home, telling her it is so bittersweet, but at least she had a boy. She is less dirty for having a boy, though she is still tarnished, no longer the girl she once was. Winifred blocks her mothers voice out, as she has long learned to do. 

 

“James.” She heaves out. “James Buchanan Barnes.” She repeats, in a whisper, now. It is a good, American name. She has learnt the customs, and everything can be in a name, here.She hears his cries as they take a bucket of water, wash him. She has read a book about this, has talked to other women in the neighborhood, women who had been through this ordeal ten times over. They say there is nothing like having your child lay on your breast for the first time. 

 

When they hand her her child, her only family in this world, everyone else having left her, she sobs. 

 

____________________________

 

She meets Sarah a year later, a wisp of a woman who Winifred can’t help but see herself in. Sarah is eighteen, and she has been throwing up. She has no friends in this city, and has only convinced the nearby hospital to give her a job because the Head Nurse is a woman who had lost a daughter Sarah’s age. Winifred sees her, sees how _terrified_ this young girl is, staring at little James hoisted on her hips as if he is a bad omen, and she invites Sarah over. 

 

Sarah says she was born and raised here, and Winifred says she is from Croatia, and she can feel that they are both lying. They do not spend time feeding eachother their little false stories- though they tell them to each other, later on, after a few months. Winifred immigrated with her husband, searching for a better life for their coming child. There was an outbreak on the ship, and her husband passed on the trip over. She survived to tell the tale. 

 

Sarah was born and raised American, and yes, she’s got a tad bit of an accent mixed in their somewhere, and that’s because her Mama and Daddy were from Britain, and when she was a kid she always wanted to sound prim and proper, like, so she copied them, and it stuck, a bit. She had a husband, got down on one knee a week before he left. They were married within the day, and although she didn’t know it, Sarah would be pregnant before he went off to war. He didn’t make it back, of course. 

 

Winifred thinks that Sarah is a very idealistic liar. 

 

Winifred nannies for a few people, low enough prices that they don’t complain when she arrives toting her one year old around. She entertains the children and feeds them, and that’s enough for some people. She makes good enough money, enough that some nights, when Sarah comes by, cold and tired and looking half on her death, Winifred can make her friend a nice hot dinner, even let’s her sleep on the couch a few nights. She remembers her mother, always insisting that her friends come over and eat, even if it meant that she would not for a few more nights. 

 

Winifred feeds Sarah more, after she remembers that. She feels _disconnected_ from her home, from the culture she grew up in. She loves and despises it at the same time. She knows, that in this new place, she must let it go. Musn’t let James see a _hint_ of where he’s from. He cannot know, so that he cannot hurt himself with it. She does, however, once in a while, force Sarah to sit down with him, play with him a bit. She feels like it is a shoddy excuse for the family and warmth that she grew up around, but at least she is trying. 

 

The night that Sarah Roger’s gives birth, they tell one another the truth. 

 

Winifred, calm as a breeze, sitting next to her gasping friend, gently tells her of growing up poor: but not so poor that she did not have a home made of wood. Others were not so lucky. She says the name quietely, because it is a secret : _Romani._ She is ashamed of it, despite some part of her screaming to be proud. 

 

She tells Sarah about pride, too. Tells her that it doesn’t mean a thing, because although Winnie doesn’t want to believe that, she knows that the only way a child with a child can survive in a place like this is to give up on being proud. So she tells Sarah about her family starving, about the meager money that her parents brought home not being enough. She tells Sarah about watching her little siblings starve. 

 

She tells her about spreading her legs for strange men, for year after year. Year after year of disrespect. Of being told she is a whore, which she supposes she is. About everyone in the house knowing, when she came home with food from the market, but no one talking about it. Everyone pretended that she was still their pure little girl. 

 

She had been saving for many years, had hoped to save enough to buy her family a little house in Italy, or maybe even _France,_ or- or Spain, even! Somewhere they could start over. She doesn’t suppose her mother will ever agree to forget her culture, but she had thought. She had thought. 

 

She doesn’t know what she thought. 

 

She doesn’t throw up. But she gets pounding headaches, days where she cannot even leave bed, barely eats because what is the point if she cannot enjoy it? Give it to the children, she would say. 

 

She gains weight, despite the not eating, and she knows. 

 

There is enough money to get them on a ship across the border, and to set them up with something similar to their current situation. She had hoped- for better. To give them a nice house to live in. To go to Spain, where she hears that jobs are plenty. She had hoped. 

 

She takes a portion of the money that she had promised herself she would leave to her child, if she did not make it through the birth. Instead, the night before they are meant to leave, she boards a ship that, although not headed directly for America, that is where some of the crew is going, and that is enough for her.

 

She nearly dies. She really, really does, but she decides that she won’t. That this child in her is going to have a _fighting chance._

 

The day she walks off the dock, takes her first step into America swollen around the belly, shesmiles so bright that a man walking by asks if she’s alright. 

 

After she is done with the story, Sarah does not look at her differently. She only nods, in pain, and, hissing, tells her own. 

 

They say children born at the turn of the century were the first of a new people. When she is sixteen, watching the riots, feeling like a silly little girl, unable to do a thing but watch the men scream for their rights, she thinks that she is nothing. She is nothing but a pawn in this little game, and she knows that she does not want to be anymore.

 

She does not find the type of rebellion she was looking for, but she finds it, nonetheless. She finds it in cigarettes and in dark red lipstick and boys who weren’t really boys anymore laughing in her ear. She tells them, excitedly, about all the things she thinks will come, about working conditions and how she hopes they’ll get fair wages, soon. She’s poor, and she herself has to work as a seamstress for her poor father, who is crippled and can’t do anything, but oh, she loves him too much, he’s such a kind man, you should meet him, really! The boys laugh with her, say that they only met the parents after a couple of dates, give her sneaky little kisses. 

 

She is seventeen when her father discharges a single bullet into his skull. She hears it, hears it through the house and she has never heard a sound quite like it. She has seen a horse race, once, and the flares are not near as loud as this. She finds his body, and by the time the neighbors and the police arrive, she is sobbing next to a corpse. She cleans herself up, and goes to the bar, because she does not know where else to go. 

 

They push wine into her hands that night, and she is young, and she has never gotten drunk before, so she takes it. She even takes the bitter alcohol they hand her that she knows isn’t something a girl should be drinking, but she does. She wakes up next to a boy who told her she was the smartest girl in the whole city, naked. 

 

She takes her fathers savings and leaves for America three weeks later. She arrives there, and is able to pay for a weeks rent at a tiny apartment. She mostly resigns herself to dying in that dank room, but she searches for a job, and to her surprise, finds one. 

 

And then she was pregnant, she says, and laughs. Arches away from the bed, twists in pain. Winifred gives her her hand, nearly gets it broken as thanks. 

 

Steve Rogers comes into this word silent, purple, and weighing less than Winnie’s shoes. Winnifred decides the solution is to give him the traditional smack on the butt. 

 

And can that boy _scream._

 

________________________

 

Winifred gets married. She supposes she should have married for money, but instead she marries a factory worker with kind eyes. He looks at her tiny son who is just learning to walk, tussles his hair, and calls him son. She will never, for the rest of her life, stop being grateful for that. And he looks at Sarah Rogers, her friend who comes over for dinner too often and goes to those _suffragette_ rallies and sometimes works herself into a fit about racial segregation- and he smiles at her, too. She sometimes wonders how that woman managed to convince immigration officers that she wasn’t a _political radical._ And when Sarah Rogers finally gets her way, well, George walks her and his wife to the polling offices, easy as that. 

 

Together, they make enough money that they do not need to be so careful. They have a daughter, and she hesitantly names her Rebecca. _To bind._ Because she is the one keeping this little family together, now. Two years later, and they decide to try again, one last child. 

 

She gets a two for one deal, which- well, is a bit of a strain of their little family, but it will be alright, she thinks. They are a family, and that is what matters. 

 

Two years later, George Barnes takes his last breath under the crushing weight of a beam that had fallen in the factory fire. 

 

Suddenly, she has four mouths to feed, one job, and no husband. She does not get to grieve. She does not get to cry. She works. She works _hard._ She does not mention it when James, who wishes she would call him Bucky like his little friend does but will not, quietly starts working for the grocer in exchange for the deformed, but still good, food. She is used to knowing what is safe to cut the mold off and what is not. 

 

She sees her first chance at freedom, at not having to work twelve hour shifts for the rest of her life, in the eyes of her son’s teacher, who calls him _brilliant_ and says that he is _going places._ She has never bothered to look at her sons schoolwork before that day, but she finds that he can write better than she can, seems to have a grasp on the English language that she never had. 

 

That night, she makes his favorite dinner, and tells him that he’s a good boy. Afterwards, he insists on bringing the leftovers for Steve. 

 

If she were being honest, Winnifred would say that she does not like Steve Rogers. That he is holding her son back. He is sickly, cannot get out of bed some days, and the days that he does, he is trying to get into a fight. He doesn’t seem to understand that this usually ends in Bucky trying to _stop_ the fight, which usually ends in her son getting ganged up on by groups of boys and coming home with black eyes. 

 

She doesn’t mention it, because it’s Sarah’s boy. Sarah had worked so hard for this little child, and she understands, because if he was going to be physically impaired, that he has to fill it up with all of that _personality._ He is like his mother- she hears him walking Bucky home, some nights, talking about _fair wages_ and _unions,_ and she has to pull her son aside and tell her that he either has to be stop being friends with Steve or tell him what being a Communist is. 

 

Steve is talking about how socialism seems like a pretty swell idea the next day. It’s a conundrum, and she doesn’t know how to explain to him that, while they’re not the same thing, he can’t go around saying that because people will get to thinking he’s a _fascist_ and a _communist._

 

She tells him it like that, and he says that he’ll just have to fight the real fascists, then, so no one can think that he is one. 

 

That boy. 

 

____________________________

 

It is a few weeks after Steve has turned eighteen, and Bucky does not come home. He arrives the next morning, and Winifred assumes he’s been up in some girls skirt. 

 

She remembers the _anger_ in her sons voice when he told her that Sarah Rogers had caught TB. 

 

Steve refuses to come to the house. He will not stay with them, because he is too proud. Winifred, briefly, thinks of her mother, who would rather starve than have their neighbors believe that she was not able and willing to save them from starving. 

 

Sarah dies, and Bucky _leaves._ Says that he’s real sorry, Ma, but it’s _Steve._

 

They visit nearly every day of the week, of course. Bucky works harder than he ever has before, and his Ma hates seeming him do it, hates taking the money he gives her with a kiss on the cheek, hates everything about it. She looks at Steve, with his brittle bones and his mothers eyes, and some part of her loves him, loves the boy she helped bring into this world, but she can’t help but think he’s taken away her son. He helps, as best he can, of course. Does paintings, comic strips, lots of political cartoons for things he doesn’t believe in, which she knows gets at him. 

 

The thing is, Winifred isn’t dull. She’s a smart woman. So when she looks at her son, and she sees the way he looks at the scrawny little thing of a man, she _knows,_ alright. And she grew up thinking that that was wrong, that you had to beat that sort of thing out of anyone who showed a sign of it. She learned it from her mothers culture, and she learned it from the priests at the catholic church that her auntie insisted on her going to. 

 

But she looks at her son, and she looks at that boy, and she thinks, well, it won’t last forever. Might as well let them live now. She does, once, pin her son with a meaningful look as he’s leaving to go check on Stevie, who had a rough day and might have pneumonia again. She looks at him, and she just says ‘Be Careful, Jamie’ and he just nods, and he knows they understand, like. 

 

It is a hot March night when she becomes certain of his sons situation, however. There is a pounding on her door, and it is nearly five in the morning, and the sun has not risen yet, but she hears Bucky yelling for her, so she opens the door. 

 

She raised her son to be gentle with women, and she likes to think that he follows that rule, but today he pushes past her, practically shoves the whole door open. 

 

“Ma, you gotta help me- we- we can’t go to the doctor and I think he needs _stitches_ and god ma, I’m sorry, I just- Stevie.” She hears, and finally, finally, she notices that her son is cradling Steve Rogers in his arms. She also notices that Steve has a large cut in his shoulder blade, and she wonders, vaguely, if the knife had been meant to go through his neck. His face is puffy and bruised, too. 

 

“Put him down, Jamie, and tell me what happened.” She says, and her son rests him on the floor, and she tuts and gestures to the table. He looks at her, wide eyed, because he wasn’t even allowed to have his hat on the table. She just rolls her eyes and helps to get the injured boy on the table. 

 

She finds a first aid kit that Sarah had given her, years ago, and she thinks it’s meant for active duty, not boys who got assaulted in a back alley or whatever the hell is happening here, but she finds string and a needle, and she gets to work. 

 

“What happened.” She says. It is not a question. 

 

“Ma.” She hears, and looks up. And god, _she knows._ She knows it so deep in her heart, but she has to hear it, because this is her little boy. She brought him into this world, and she wants him to be honest, and she wants him to know that she loved all of him, even the parts she didn’t so much like. 

 

“Jamie.” She says, and her son breaks. 

 

Rockland Palace, a club, and she’s heard of it, because everyone hears _rumours._ They don’t exactly live in the best area, sort of seedy, and its only a few streets over that it’s known that bathhouses are running, specifically catering to queer men. She hopes, a little desperately, that her son at least doesn’t go to those. 

 

Bucky is talking about a masquerade, gesturing at a little black mask stuffed in his pocket, how nobody saw him, and he’s rambling, and for some reason Winnie can’t get her mind off Eva Kotchever. 

 

Eva was a Polish-Jew, friends with Sarah Rogers through the local suffragette grouping. Eva was… a radical, to say the least. Sarah had thought she was _hilarious._ Said she was so very odd. Dressed in these clothes that were… half-man, half-woman, she said, laughing. Eva was one of the richer ladies that Sarah knew, and she owned a tea room. Sarah, once, had asked Winifred to have Steve over for a night so that she could visit it. 

 

The next time Sarah saw her, she was so _delighted_ with the whole experience. She said that Eva was a _queer,_ which, Winifred hadn’t even known that was… something women did. Did it even count? Sure, she’d heard about women who dressed up as men, but she mostly just excused that as ladies who didn’t really have any strong female role models. But really? Just… doing the sort of things you’d do with a man with women? With homosexual men, it had always just seemed… a perversion. With women? Just odd.

 

Sarah describes a short collection of stories she had read, detailing some particularly _sensual_ details of their community, and Winnie laughs at her to be quiet, because honestly, the woman might only be twenty-five, but she still acts like a rowdy teenage girl, sometimes. Winifred, on the other had, felt old, at thirty-two, at the time with twin newborns. One of the things Winnie does noticed- Sarah never makes fun of her being a Jew. Lots of people do that kind of thing, and Winnie has always felt a bit of anger over it, despite not being one. It’s a little different from being Roma, from people thinking that your race is dirty and backwards, but she still feels the connection. 

 

They don’t really mention Eva again, but a few months later, Sarah tells her, a bit teary eyed, that Eva was arrested for making sexual advances on a police woman. Winifred, a little cruelly, had thought she deserved it. 

 

She looks down at Steve Rogers beaten face, and thinks that Eva probably didn’t deserve it. 

 

“Did a police man do this? Did they see his face?” She asks, quick as bullet. Bucky shakes his head immediately. 

 

“Well- yes, but he had the mask on, and I don’t- I don’t think they really cared. They went around finding random people and claiming they had _sexually solicited_ them, or something, and they-“ he pauses for a second, as if afraid to admit something- “They, uh, they tried grabbing _me,_ and Steve started yelling, and then they said they were going to arrest him for disorderly conduct, and then he kept yelling, and then they just- they grabbed me and held me, and they dragged him, and _god, ma,_ I didn’t know what to do.” he says, looking stricken. She finishes with Steve’s stitches, and moves to grab a cloth to wipe away the blood on his face. 

 

“Then someone, I don’t know who, but they shove the cop off me, and I _ran_ , and they had a goddamn knife at his throat, asking him for- well, you know what they were asking him for, ma, and so I went and shove him, but the guy went to cut him, but it just got on his shoulder, and then this little _idiot_ decides he still wants to fight the guy, and it took him a couple of whacks to the head to run away with me, and ma, I’m- I’m sorry. “

 

She turns to her son then, who is on the verge of tears, and she decides something for him. Because she wants her son to be happy, but she also wants him to be alive. And she thinks that maybe this is what he needs to be happy now, but maybe, maybe if he just _tries,_ he can be happy in the normal way. So she takes a breath, and she talks. 

 

“Bucky, if you love this man on the table the way I think you do, you stop doing this with him. You stop- you stop going to parties like that, you stop putting yourselves in danger. You don’t encourage him. You make him forget that part of himself by forgetting that part of you. Because I swear to god- this, this is _nothing_ compared to what they will do to you once one of you gets arrested for this. And you know I would love you if you burned the whole of Brooklyn down, but I love you too much to tell you that this is ever going to turn out how you’d like it to. “ She says, tilting her chin up and putting her hand on his shoulder. 

 

Her son looks sick. But then he looks at his- his _Steve_ on the table, and then he looks up, a cold fury in his eyes. 

 

“Yes, Ma.” He says, and that is the end of that. 

 

___________________________

 

**Author's Note:**

> i hope you liked this! This was most of the setup, although ill have more regarding the army, it's policies, voting, socialism, sex, etc. (TW HOLOCAUST) eva kotcher was a real person! she ran eve's hangout in new york, which basically amounted to a lesbian hangout. she was a polish-jewish immigrant and a lesbian. she had a book about lesbian sex and love that she shared with close friends. an undercover police officer got close to her, eva asked her out and showed her the book. eva was arrested for disorderly conduct, which is the main charge for homosexuality at the time. eva was eventually deported, probably due to the fact that political radicals could be deported, and antisemitism was rampant at the time. eva ran a bookshop for a few years in paris, joined the spanish civil war, and eventually went back to france, where she was eventually arrested and sent to auswitz, where she ultimately passed away. may she rest in power.
> 
> NOTE!- i harbor no resentment towards the romani ppl, but for the purposes of this fic, winifred does so that why its spoken abt in a slightly negative light. i want to highlight their struggle in this story and their persecution during the holocaust. also i was rlly vague about the irish shit bc idk anything abt it. also sarah WAS raped, i just didnt tag it bc its not graphic and not largely impactful to the plot.


End file.
